Jail Term For Freckled Paedophile

Jail term for freckled paedophile

A paedophile caught out by the freckles on his hands in a case said to be the first of its kind has been jailed. Dean Hardy, 50, has been jailed for six years Father-of-one, Dean Hardy, 50, took photographs of young Thai girls being sexually abused during a business trip he made to the country,

The furniture salesman from Orpington, Kent, was jailed at Southwark Crown Court in central London after admitting two counts of indecent assault of a girl under the age of 13 four counts of taking indecent photographs of children during March and April 2004 and one count of possessing indecent photographs.

He was careful not to include his face in the photographs but police noticed a male hand touching the young girls in some of the pictures.

Judge Gregory Stone, sentencing, said: "It's plain from the evidence that you went to Thailand where you molested young girls and took photographs, indecent photographs, of these young female children.

"As many as four children were involved in these crimes. This was sex tourism of the most offensive kind. You were plainly exploiting their and their families' poverty and vulnerability without caring what harm you were inflicting on these children, and caring only for your own depraved gratification."

The photographs were discovered when police acting on intelligence searched his home and discovered images on memory cards from two cameras and the hard drive of a computer.

Two of the 63 indecent photographs found on the memory cards showed young South-East Asian girls - between the ages of eight and ten - being abused by an adult.

A forensic anthropologist compared the freckles and blemishes on the hand in the photograph with those on Hardy's left hand and found that they were identical.

Police also found that he had travelled to Thailand at the time the pictures were taken. They analysed the electronic information contained within the picture files to reveal the date they were created and cross-referenced that information with date stamps in Hardy's passport and his credit card records.